Resource Mobilization and Enabling Environment for
Poverty Eradicationin the context of the implementation of the Program of
Actionfor the Least Developed Countries for the Decade 2001-2010*

Thursday, 29 June 2004

Madam President:

With indications that the least developed countries are in
danger of failing to meet established goals aimed at eradication of poverty, the
Holy See joins its voice to those that are urgently calling the family of
nations to attend to the needs of its most vulnerable members.

My delegation notes with concern that, based on progress to
date, most LDCs are unlikely to achieve, for example, the goals of the Brussels
Program of Action [BPOA]. Economic growth rates of LDCs have been well below
levels needed to start making inroads into poverty reduction, investment flows
have not increased significantly, Official Development Assistance (ODA) and
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flows have been inadequate. Moreover, many LDCs
find themselves in a post-conflict situation with as many as 80% of the 20
poorest LDCs having emerged from a civil war within the past 15 years.

But, these difficulties and challengesencountered thus
far must not be regarded as excuses, but rather as spurs to more intense efforts
by the development partners. For as Pope John Paul II has insisted, "The poor
cannot wait." No one can deny that the challenge to reverse what often appears
to be a self-perpetuating cycle of poverty, especially of LDCs, is formidable.

Sometimes overlooked among the obstacles to progress is the fact
that globalization has accelerated the disruption of entire ways of life. As
age-old patterns of work and family life have disintegrated, a sense of
powerlessness has increased. As new forms of poverty have emerged, the faces of
the poor are increasingly those of women and children. In short, the world is
currently going through a chaotic phase, filled with both risk and promise.
Those most at risk in the midst of this economic and social turbulence are often
the most ignored.

However, the international community has worked out a
coordinated, cooperative approach to enabling the least developed countries to
develop their own economies and to enter the circle of production and exchange.
The elements of that approach have been largely agreed upon: debt relief, fair
trade practices, the rule of law, investment in education, primary health care,
nutrition, and sanitation.

In this regard, the Holy See takes note of the Brussels Program
of Action which is aimed at the eradication of poverty and hunger in the world’s
50 least developed countries (LDC) where 700 million of the world’s poor are
living. The specific commitments envisaged under this Action Program can trigger
increasing development aid, promote foreign investment, reduce debt burdens, and
open up markets in industrial countries for LDC exports.

Internationally agreed action programs, such as the BPOA, have
the potential to offer humankind the key to unlocking the prison of poverty. For
the first time in history, we may even be within reach of setting conditions for
every girl and boy to develop her or his full human potential. But, the key to
the prison gates cannot be turned by one party alone. It will be a scandal and a
tragedy if the nations do not join hands to turn that key. Here, the
international community should call on the developed countries to take the lead
in showing a greater degree of responsibility and solidarity as well as an
abandonment of their sole group interests and objectives in the noble interest
of the common good. Without a serious commitment of the developed nations to do
their share of sacrifice in this process, the LDCs will continue to be trapped
in their current difficult situation.

Hence the urgency of this High-Level Segment: How can
commitments already made be revitalized? How can progress along a well-charted
path be speeded? The Holy See, as a partner with longstanding special concern
for the poorest people in the poorest countries, recognizes that a broad range
of cooperative economic and political measures are required.

In view of the internationally agreed target of reducing poverty
by one half in LDCs by 2015, the Holy See acknowledges that there is now a
pressing need for a more effective global commitment to mobilize increased
volumes of financial resources for development to address widespread poverty in
LDCs. However, for this financial support to be of benefit to LDCs, it must be
channeled more effectively into well prepared, productive investments that
provide clear benefits to the communities for which it was intended. In
parallel, a major effort is needed to build up local capacity to help prepare
and implement these investments while improved transparency and accountability
procedures need to be put in place to monitor how these resources are being
spent. As efforts are made to develop more adequate financial and commercial
conditions, the international community should continue to seek for ways and
means to enable a fair distribution of profits and to establish conditions that
can ensure true human development.

The Holy See wishes to emphasize, however, that any measure to
promote authentic and lasting development must be protective of human dignity
and culture.

The need to respect human dignity and culture raises the
question of the sources of the ethical principles that are necessary to sustain
authentic development. While it is widely understood that natural environments
are at risk in the current, turbulent age, less attention has been paid to the
growing crisis in humanity’s fragile social environments. Rapid social and
economic changes, and in some places armed conflicts, have taken a severe toll
on families and their surrounding social structures. In many poor countries,
families have been devastated by HIV/AIDs pandemic and disrupted by migration.
Since the family is the primary setting where human beings first acquire the
qualities of character and competence that ground healthy economies and
polities, development policies must be attentive to their impact on endangered
social environments.

Investment in human capital must rank high on the development
agenda. Though the least developed countries are materially poor, they are rich
when it comes to the potential contained within the human person. The human
person is where all dimensions of development come together--development not
only as the elimination of poverty but as the liberation of the gifts and
talents of every woman and man through better health, education, and
opportunity. The liberation of that potential must entail careful attention to
the situations of women and girls, assuring their full and equal access to
education and health, as well as to civil, political, economic, social and
cultural rights. Towards these ends, the experience and resources offered by
faith-based initiatives as partners in the fields of education, health care and
relief should be fully utilized.

Now that the means are possible to defeat mankind’s old enemies,
hunger and poverty, there is no excuse for failing to press forward. The chief
obstacle has been pinpointed by the Secretary General when he said, "While there
may be enough resources to combat hunger, the political will to do so is still
lacking." What has impeded the mobilization of the necessary will? It is not
only the vicious cycle of material poverty in the least developed countries, but
a certain poverty of imagination among the more fortunate peoples of the world:
a failure of empathy, an inability to recognize the interdependence of all
members of the human family, a forgetfulness of our radical dependence upon the
earth, the harvest, and the children who represent the human future. In that
connection, the Holy See takes this occasion to reaffirm its historic
commitments on both fronts: its commitment to providing education, health care,
and other basic services to the poorest members of the human family, and its
corresponding mission to open the hearts of the privileged.

What is needed, Madam President, is a change of heart, that the
international community may be ever bolder, more generous, more creative, more
energetic in its struggle to finally end the division of the world into areas of
poverty and plenty.